Cold & Snow Highlight the Beginning of the New Year.

Forecasted snowfall totals up until Wednesday morning. 
Locally higher amounts are possible.
CrawfordWeather.com

A new year begins pretty soon so it is time to put all that warm winter weather behind us.  Winter will make its first real appearance in a few days bringing chilly arctic air and some lake effect snow.


A strong low pressure system is expected to strengthen and  roll through the area Sunday and Sunday night.  Some light snow showers are expected Sunday but the real mess starts Sunday night as our area will be on the back side of the low.  The strong low will bring down some very chilly arctic air (coldest of the season) and this combined with a Northwesterly wind flow and an unfrozen lake (39°F Water Temp) will create a perfect Lake Effect situation for our area.  The cold air and northwest flow looks like it will stay around until Tuesday night so a good amount of snow could pile up between Sunday & Tuesday night.  Snowfall totals are hard to predict right now but as the days get closer we'll get a better picture of how much will fall.  Time to get the snow shovels out folks...winter was just running a little late.

2011 Hurrcicane Season In Review

2011 Hurricane Season
Track Summary (Wikipedia)

November 30th marked the last day of the 2011 hurricane season.  Numbers were fairly impressive after they were all calculated.  19 tropcial storms formed this season with 7 of them strengthening into hurricanes.  3 of them formed into major hurricanes, which requires a status of category 3 or higher.  On average, 11 tropical storms form so this year was well above average.

Last 5 Years
              Storms        Hurricanes        Major Hurricanes
2010          19                 12                       5
2009            9                   3                       2
2008          16                   8                       5
2007          15                   6                       2
2006          10                   5                       2

This Year
2011          19                   7                       3

Watch the 2011 hurricane season in 4.5 minutes.

Go Into The Storm With Tim Samaras

Tim Samaras (Discovery)

Mark your calenders weather enthusiasts.  On January 10 at 7:00 PM Tim Samaras from the Discovery Channel hit series Storm Chasers will conduct a presentation on extreme weather at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College.  The event will be held in The McGarvey Commons in the Reed Union Building on campus.  Admission is free and open to the public. Before the show starts, local Meteorologist Jason Berry  from WJET-TV will present on tornado research at 6:00 PM in the same room.  All are encouraged to attend that event. 

2009 TWISTEX Group (Wikipedia)

Samaras is head of the research experiment called TWISTEX.  One objective of TWISTEX is to gain more knowledge about the internal tornado environment near the surface.  Samaras designed a probe that senses pressure drops in tornadoes.  Called the "turtle" probe, Samaras successfully launched one of them in the center of a tornado in 2003 and recorded a record 100 millibar drop in pressure inside the tornado.  Findings like this will help lead to better understanding of tornadoes.

Information about this event can be found at Jason Berry's Stormtracker webpage or at Penn State Behrend's webpage.

Contact Jason Berry @ jberry@wjettv.com if you have any questions regarding this event. 

Accu-Weather Revises Winter Outlook

The revised AccuWeather Winter Outlook.
Click here for the AccuWeather Winter Outlook blog article.

AccuWeather has revised their winter outlook.  A few changes were made, especially here in the Northeastern part of the United States. 

The main change comes in the temperatures.  AccuWeather is now believing the winter will not be as cold as they had once thought for the Northeast.  Long lasting shots of cold arctic air are not as highly expected now but according to the weather blog, "there can still be cold snaps with below-normal temperatures".

This is AccuWeather's inital winter outlook,
which has changed.

In terms of the forecasted amount of snow...not much has changed.  AccuWeather still says "normal lake-effect snow" is expected and some areas could even see above average snowfall.

It seems that the above average warm November that just passed has made AccuWeather second guest their initial forecast.   I'm curious to see if these changes turn out to be correct.  I guess it is a wait and see game now.  As far as the other winter outlooks from NOAA and farmers almanac, no changes have been made.